What do you want to be

...when you grow up? Exposing kids to career options early can help them make an eventual choice

The GazetteSeptember 25, 2009

John Archer wants to know how the 11-year-olds in Ginette Lalonde's class are faring with their stock portfolios. Who's making money? he asks as several hands shoot up.

A financial adviser at RBC Dominion Securities, Archer was on a return visit this week to the Grade 5 class. Two months ago, he addressed the kids about his career as a stock broker and showed them how to track the stock market.

"How many of you have RIM in your portfolio?" he asked, referring to Research in Motion, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry.

"The share price has jumped to $142 from the $122 it was at when I was last here. If you have this, the value of your portfolio is up $1,800." Back in April, Archer gave each of Lalonde's students at Roslyn School in Westmount an imaginary sum of $10,000 to invest in five stocks he had introduced them to. They were to monitor the value of the stocks they had pretended to buy. He also told them all about his work.

Archer is one of the many parents who have spoken to the class about their respective careers. From lawyers, singers, chefs and journalists to architects, bankers, engineers and artists, the children have been exposed to a broad spectrum of careerists. Some now say it has helped them narrow down the field of work possibilities that lie in their future.

Archer's son, Jonathan, says he would like to follow his dad into a career as a financial adviser.

"But I'd also like to be a goalie in the NHL," he said. "I'd want to go to university, like Ken Dryden, so that when I retire from hockey at the age of 37, I could go to another job." One thing these children do know is summarized by their classmate, Violet Pask. She thought she might want to be an archeologist, architect, doctor or journalist. She is now leaning toward a single career as a mining engineer.

"Whatever you choose, you have to choose well because you'll do it for a long time," she said.

What differentiates this cohort from previous generations is the mind-boggling array of choices they have.

"Too many choices can be as bad as not enough," said Lalonde. "It's unsettling to have too few choices because it's hard to find where you fit in. But if you have too many choices, it's the same dilemma. Where do you throw yourself?" Lalonde says her goal in exposing the children to the many talents of their own parents was to make them aware of the various job opportunities that await them.

"It was an introduction to what they can become in life," she said. "And they're so proud of their parents who talk about the pros and cons of their work." What differentiates today's parents from those of previous generations is the concern and worry they have about their children's career prospects.

"The last generation of parents were less career-savvy than this one," said Barbara Moses, a Toronto-based career management expert and author of What Next - The Complete Guide to Taking Control of Your Working Life.

"Thirty years ago, work was a 40-hour-a-week thing and not the 80-hour marathon it is now. And people were unlikely to question their career choices. Now, we have heightened career consciousness." Anxiety about choosing the right career early is being downloaded by parents to their children, she said.

While it's useful to expose kids to various careers, she said, it should be done "in the same way we expose children to art and theatre.

"Giving them a better idea of what people do for a living is like getting them to listen to Mozart or Bach. It enhances their lives." But, Moses warns, parents should refrain from urging their children to make up their minds about careers early in life. For many, "the actual career eureka doesn't happen until they're in their early 30s.

"Sure, some kids know at an early age that they're interested in the theatre or words or painting or hairdressing. But most don't begin to reflect on what they like or don't like until they've had jobs. I call it successive approximations. They can narrow it down by the time they get to university." Still, the road to the right career can be a crap shoot.

"You'll pursue an educational course, but it can be a tree that has several branches," Moses said. "The person who studies social work because she wants to help people may discover she can't bear being on the front lines, handling people's problems and would rather go into policy work." Carmen Sicilia, a Montreal-based career management coach with Discoveryworks, who counsels adolescents as well as adults, sees a lot of young people who don't have a clue of what they want to do with their lives.

"Young adults often don't understand what they want because they don't have enough information," she said. "Also, they haven't experienced it." While young people often look to their interests as a key to the careers that might suit them, Sicilia said, "they forget to look at their personalities and lifestyles. They need to look at the big picture of who they are. They may have an interest in something, but the career may not mesh with who they are as a complete person." Sicilia, who is completing a Ph.D. in educational psychology, says the vast array of career choices can also be overwhelming for youths.

"They don't know how to sort it out." She says the experience that comes from internships, summer employment and job shadowing is a valuable path to discovery.

She recalls taking a group of young clients who were interested in television journalism to a local TV station. After touring the station and talking to journalists, "one of the kids said: 'I don't want to do this. It's too computerized for me.' He hadn't realized what it was really like," she said.

Moses says kids cannot choose careers until they've experienced a series of jobs. And she urges anxious parents to "chill out." "Kids can develop a concept of what they like, but that'll change a huge amount," she said. "Parents should not evaluate every one of their kids' missteps as a harbinger of disaster or every one of their talents as bellwethers of future career success." The students in Lalonde's class say they're keeping an open mind about their career prospects.

"I think maybe I could be a lawyer," said 11-year-old Kelley Devaney.

"I want to be a professional swimmer, an archeologist, a musician, a writer and an artist," said his classmate, Devan Kelly. "I used to want to be about 20 different things, but I'm down to five now. It's hard to choose." It is. That's why it's a good thing she and the other kids in her class have a few years to figure it all out.